People who have suffered serious illness from COVID face increased risk of ventricular tachycardia, according to a new study.
Dr Marcus Stahlberg and his team from the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, investigated the long-term risk of arrhythmias among patients treated in intensive care for COVID infection that needed mechanical ventilation.
They used information from a Swedish medical registry to identify 3,023 patients treated between March 2020 and June 2021, and compared each patient’s outcomes to that of ten comparable people from the general population.
Analysis showed that those who needed mechanical ventilation were 16 times more likely to be hospitalised for ventricular tachycardia over the following six months.
The risks of being hospitalised for atrial fibrillation, other tachyarrhythmias, or bradycardia/pacemaker implantation were also raised.
The team explain that the rate of ventricular tachycardia was 15.4 per 1,000 person-years after severe COVID, but 0.9 in the general population.
The figures were 78.4 per 1,000 person-years for atrial fibrillation after severe COVID, compared with 6.0 without, and 99.3 per 1,000 person-years for other tachyarrhythmias after severe COVID, compared with 6.7.
Dr Stahlberg said: “The actual likelihood of developing ventricular tachycardia or other arrhythmias after severe COVID-19 is low for the individual patient, but much higher than in those without severe infection.
“Higher age and male sex are two important risk factors for getting severely sick with COVID-19 and this was reflected in our study participants.
“Globally we have 650 million reported COVID-19 cases, hospital systems should prepare for an increase in patients requiring management for new onset arrhythmias.”
Findings were presented yesterday at EHRA 2023, a scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology.
Leave a Reply